with your violence. irregular warfare is exactly the opposite. violence prepares the human battle space for the political effo effort. that human battle space then is both the field of contest and of course it is the means of this armed political movement. it must mobilize a counterstate in whatever form to challenge the state. what this movement then is doing is what any political effort does. it is mobilizing the people you see here. the few, the proud, the maoists.

be an army of one. be a man among men. be a woman among men in a society where gender relations are horribly unbalanced. the new world recruits, it disciplines, it trains, it deploys, it rewards, it even gives you permission to marry. what happens to those who do not want to join this new movement? if you look at the audience here, i would dare say a majority, an easy majority, have experienced what we're showing here, either in iraq, afghanistan, colombia, southern philippines, the horn of africa. that is, a new political force

intra jekts itself into local space. local actors, such as teachers shown here, who attempt to resist must be neutralized. once they are removed from the local political battlefield, the new political force can reshape the political opportunity structure. the maoists officially declared people's war on the 13th of february 1996. you have the timeline in your packet. during the first five, six years of the war, they led with terror. the systemic removal of local actors who opposed this new

answer to building a better nepal. terror included not only attacking individuals but also of course trying to remove every element of the existing state. this a district headquarters that was bombed. but everything was attacked in nepal. much as the ka mir rouge did, much that shining path did. you had even small damns that generated hydroelectricity destroyed simply because they had been built by the government. the weapons were the standard ones we've seen all over the world. hundreds of thousands if not millions of rice cookers available in this asian society turned into ieds, absolutely devastating on soft targets such as police stations and of course the police as the armed local representatives of the state in

any society are the next target. in any of nepal's 75 districts, you also had local government armed capacity stripped away. a typical district such as ropa shown here began 1996 with 33 police stations, the blue boxes, securing its 210,000 people. by the time you got to 2003 you only had the two police stations with the blue circles around them remaining. inside those two jurisdictions you had 10,000 people. outside those jurisdictions you had the remaining 200,000 people. this math will also prove

crucial to what we're going to get to in a second. a typical action, again one many have experienced here, a police station where i did research, just 19 men, the town could be reached only by road, the police attacked in the dead of night, 15 killed in the fighting, three critically injured, one was able to hide. the next day one of the country's four helicopters, mi-17 came in. all it could do was evacuate and abandon the post. consequently it was completely controlled by this new movement, the maoists. already by the middle of 2003,

more than half of all police stations had been, as they called it, consolidated, which of course meant they had been abandoned. the only card any country has left to play at this point is its military. it's why we place so much emphasis on leaving the ana in the functioning capacity when we depart with our main forces from afghanistan. the royal nepal army was attacked first by the insurgents, not the other way around, and as it deployed, the insurgents matched the buildup. one of the defining characteristics of the war in iraq and afghanistan is that it has remained overwhelmingly small unit, platoons, for example, can man forward operating bases. if you're familiar with the film

"we were soldiers," you of course see what we knew in vietnam, that is what happens when you can't put out a battalion and have it survive. this is what nepal confronted as the 2000s began to unfold. a typical attack, november 2002, a reinforced company of 150 found itself attacked by four main force battalions, four auxiliary battalions of ratio to 3,000-150, basically the battle of the alamo. it was able to hold only because the commander of the unit won their equivalent of the medal of honor. what this battle highlighted, we know from the maoist documents, is that if you can't overrun

district capitals, such as jumla being held here, you as an insurgency are stuck. and at this point in time the group we're discussing controlled 70% of the population, but it could not get the remaining 30% of the population. thus the movement was faced with a conundrum. how does it take it through the red zone and score? now, the system gave it its opening. even as you had the military becoming more efficient, as we see in afghanistan, the same issues that have surfaced time and time again in afghanistan and we see surfacing in iraq, that is the incapacity of the political system, surfaced large

to the extent where in february 2005 the only extra systemic figure in the country, the king, in effect declared marshall law. he declared direct royal rule and appointed the prime ministers. this of course ailentated the legal political parties, of which there were seven. you now have an extraordinary meeting occurring in which the subject of this day's meetings in effect are subject to scrutiny. what one very persuasive faction of the maoists said was we have led with violence. using the three or the five lines of effort by which maoists people's war unfolds, we have

been able to get 70% of the way to victory. and yet we find ourselves blocked now by the royal nepal army and people like hirajoshi. we can't get the district capitals, we can't get the national capital region. what we have to do then is advance, wait, emphasize our other lines of effort. in particular what the king has done has given us your classic opportunity to emphasize united front activity. let us make common cause with these estranged political parties, emphasize our other ways of doing things and in effect do a double envelopment

around armed state capacity. we can finally neutralize rna by highlighting its own inefficiency, its various errors, using what has been called law fare and we can bring down the government. this strategy proved successful. you had united front action putting millions of people in the streets, the government collapsed in 2006 as the maoists moved into areas they did not control. a formal peace agreement was signed in november 2006 between the maoists and the legal political parties, the monarchy having been disestablished. on the surface it appears this has worked out much like the philippines did in the

revolution after the ouster of marcos in the february of 2006. in reality what occurred that was at the original meeting the maoists had said peace provides the perfect environment for us to continue the war by other means. the key component of the peace agreement was of course that the military would return to barracks and that the people's liberation army would enter contonements and parliamentary mechanisms would be reestablished, those that had been be abury kated by the king. several only 7,000 combatants

that showed up at the liberation army. but you see the cantonments. most of these individuals were new recruits and at least 7,000 were children. simultaneously almost to the day that all of these people flooded the cantonments, half of the people's liberation army, no less than one third, moved laterally under order and became the cadre of a new political action group, the young communist league. what they did, of course, was function to prepare the human battle space for the upcoming parliamentary election. put very simply, they brutalized, killed, kidnapped anyone who was opposed to voting for the maoists. they shaped the human terrain

and even figures of the press who courageously tried to cover this found themselves either murdered or in effect run out of town. the result of course is when the elections were held, the maoists much surprisingly much like daniel day lewis's favorite candidates in "the gangs of new york" swept the elections. if everything i have said here is known, how could this continue? and with of course apologies to the stray graphic i found in a google search, i mean, nothing by the person shown here, the problem of course is that the international community itself and local actors had so invested in the peace process that by the time elections were held in 2008 and the maoists not surprisingly emerged victorious because the opposition parties which had

once dominated had been decimated, the position was advanced that with responsibility will come adjustment to democratic routine. that is, the maoist, much like the fmln, the ira, will in fact in good faith participate in the peace process. in reality they did nothing of the sort. they continued to shape the battle space and so we have a situation where the number two in the maoist movement is the sitting prime minister. heap makes no decisions without consulting the party. and in conclusion we have a situation which is even more extraordinary. the debates going on within the maoists pit the two figures on the left of this trio against

the figure on the right. that is the two figures on the left, the head of the party and the head of the government, tell the main radical why do you keep claiming we have to complete the revolution by overt violence? we now control the state. we control all organs of the state and anyone who opposed us has been eliminated. leave well enough alone and again a short period of time we will write into the new constitution all of our revolutionary goals. bija, however, says you are falling for the oldest trap there, is power only grows through the barrel of the gun, we must flood the streets with our urban combatants and we must

sweep all before us and then dictate the terms of the peace agreement. this then is quite a different kettle of fish from what we see when you have organizations that do in fact evidence a willing to compromise and a willingness to actually end armed conflict. thank you. [ applause ] thank you. two very good presentations. and now i think we're going to start doing question and answers, but we're going to do it in a slightly different way than has been done in previously panels. whoever gets the microphone first gets to speak. all right. so --

>> i'd like to take this moment first to thank mcu for this timely symposium and also thank you for a great panel. my question is for dr. tarzi. you have mentioned briefly about the strategic partnership agreement -- >> can you speak up? >> you briefly touched on the strategic partnership agreement being signed by president obama and president karzai and the taliban's reaction to that, that basically president obama sig d signed -- i'd like to make a brief comment going back. the importance of this partnership agreement. there are like, you know, sort two scenarios or two camps that are analyzing the importance of this partnership agreement in terms of pushing the taliban to come basically to the

negotiation table, especially from the pakistani sides because going back to 2009 whlt surge started in afghanistan, theirs there was a timeline that the americans will leave by 2014. but now this partnership agreement that has been signed will commit the u.s. basically to roo main in afghanistan for another ten years. so do you think that this would probably push the pakistanis who are in a way controlling the taliban to maybe sort of push the taliban to come back to the negotiation table per se and maybe reach some sort of an agreement? and if that agreement is to be made, what sort of agreement would that be, which would be acceptable by pretty much all afghans. thank you. >> i wish i knew the answer to that, what the pakistanis are doing and the taliban. i can tell you from my speculation more looking at the situation. first of all, the partnership

agreement does not have any specific issues of what would happen. it does commit the united states to regard major non-nato ally. that's a big word because of countries such as republic of korea and japan. that could change on how specifically this would look. the agreement does not have any specific issuings on the basings. one is those bases will not be used against others and so on. so we need to kind of be still in the negotiation process. but, yes, the idea is the united states will stay committed, as you're correct. everybody said the announcement of 2014 will say, look, we just got to wait it out and we have it. the question is, what kind of afghanistan -- okay, you have a presence where true

international help, not just u.s. -- this is a nato agreement, maybe some other partners. you have a government in afghanistan that's selected because there will be an election if the constitution is to be respected before 2014, that controls certain areas of the country. there's an afghan national army that's controlling specific areas. then the taliban kind of merge into a power in the areas in the south. that's one scenario. scenario two is whether or not pakistan will accept that. who knows. pakistan wants a say in the future of afghanistan. pakistan's policy also seems to say anything but indian influence. so they may be a give and take there. now we have a much better relationship, at least right now. it could swing again. maybe that would have an effect. as i said, we cannot look at this as only an

american-afghanistan or u.s. taliban. as you know, the taliban officially refused to speak to karzai. they call him a puppet and say why should we speak to them. so if they do that, a lot of things on the table. i think the agreement, you're right. allows us a foundation over which to re-engage them on a scenario that says, look, you can come and beat us. what other aspects are there? those are very important. what do the other afghan elements do? if they feel the taliban are gaining more power, whether through the ballot or through a deal, they may not just sit still. so i think the case is open. i think a great step has been done last night. the fact that we are more clearer, hopefully in chicago

and then in tokyo. you have more clarity on specifics. i think one thing that would break the taliban's resolve is a longer term, specific, clear, achievable goals. thank you. >> doctor, you mentioned that mulanmar has been designated the commander of the faithful. can you elaborate what that means in terms of the taliban will accept in the future role. is it possible for him to abdicate that title, or do the people who designated him such say, well, that was then, this is now? and therefore, he does not have to have that role.

and, does that mean that the expectation is that he, or someone with that title, will be in the leadership role of the muslim, of the faithful in afghanistan? >> thank you. the reason that we have not seen him may actually play in a positive way. nobody has seen him. as you've seen in the past few years, both the pakistanis have been able to get some of the leadership of the taliban and put them in jail and thus eliminate their effectiveness. even if you release them afterward -- i'm not saying he will be put in jail. the idea is that they are still -- the host controls a lot of the movements. as i mentioned on passing, there are elements in the taliban that are looking for leadership. i don't think he's essential in

the sense of somebody who's really not there. could be there, could not be there. if he's dead today, somebody writes for him, he's still alive. nobody's seen him. to answer the question, if there's a deal made, there could be a religious title for him where he becomes a guardian of the religious aspect of the country. afghanistan, we should not forget we use that in the military. i'm glad we do. it's a very islamic constitution. so they could be found somebody there that gives him a title that allows him to oversee the religion. that, of course, there's a lot of issues whether he will accept the shias or not. the constitution looks at the minority specifically and gives them a say in the constitution. how would he look at that?

the taliban seem to be -- i see, at least, seems to be much softer on the shias. perhaps that would be an um b l umbrella under which he works, or people just die. naturally or unnaturally. >> thank you, sir. jed crane with the joint staff. just a question to you sort of playing off both of your presentations. what sign post can we look for from the taliban to see that they're negotiating in good faith or not? are there any lessons from nepal we can take for that? sort of along those lines, at what point are they no longer our enemy and become a group we're trying to create societal healing with? thank you.

>> let me get this straight. what you're asking for is sign posts that they're cooperating, right? >> yes, sir. >> okay. >> i think that plays right into one of the key areas of research. that is, your normal metrics are no longer useful. for example, violence is, in fact, way down. it's way down because asylum numbers are way up. people have fled. so i think when you look at sign posts, you have your traditional metrics such as participation in the system, but i think far more

important is things such as being willing to get rid of your militia, the ycl, to be willing to allow student organizations to function as something other than armed pressure groups. this is very similar when you think about it to the situation you have in lebanon or in gaza or in other areas. that is, you're not engagiing i normal politics and therefore cannot use normal metrics. if you're allowing political forces to field their own armed elements, and so i think that is the biggest one. a willingness to participate in the political process as well as economic and social processes without fielding sub-rosa armed forces. i think a second one would be a willingness to enable the state

without continuing to carry out, execute a parallel system, which funds the political party, which is the maos. that is extortion and criminality are at an all-time high in nepal. but these are executed through party organs. you, in effect, have several nepals functioning. one has to decide what one is going to be a part of. >> i think we've actually come to the end of our session. so, thank you all very much. [ applause ] >> if you could all be back here by 1500, please. it's 3:00.